Hugh Dancy has been thesp-flying under
the radar, delivering remarkable supporting performances
in a number of recent indies (Evening, The
Jane Austen Book Cub, Savage Grace). In
Max Mayer’s always absorbing but occasionally uneven
film Adam, he is finally given a leading role
where he can show off his tremendous talents.

When we first meet Adam, he seems like
any idiosyncratic, affluent New Yorker. Upon closer scrutiny,
he is refreshingly but oddly unfiltered. The reason, it
turns out, is Adam has Asperger Syndrome, a functional
type of autism where the afflicted person speaks what
he is thinking (making him socially awkward) and has no
idea what other people are thinking (meaning he’s
terrible at relationships).

Adam’s father has just passed
away and he must now deal with everyday living, alone.
Enter Beth (Damages’ Rose Byrne) who eventually
realizes Adam’s disorder but decides to embark on
a relationship anyway.

The film works best when it doesn’t
take itself too seriously. The more heavy-handed scenes
are, the more it feels tv-movie-esque. Mayer’s direction
and script can be clumsy, but he is terrific at getting
the best from his actors.

In addition to Dancy and Byrne creating
some wonderful moments, the supporting cast shine—especially
Amy Irving as Beth’s long-suffering mother. Peter
Gallagher is saddled with playing her slick trickster
cheat of a husband in a subplot that should have been
engrossing but seems cliché’ and out of place
in the film.

I found myself falling in love with
the first half of Adam (as Beth does with Adam)
and then wishing it didn’t have to take the obvious
routes in the second half—though the ending is atypical.

What makes Adam so good is
Adam: Dancy’s honest, quirky, understated, nuanced
performance. He allows us inside Adam’s world without
betraying the affliction or the man. Hugh Dancy, along
with Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, is the
first real Best Actor Oscar contender of 2009.

Sophie Barthes’Cold SoulsOpens Friday, August 7, 2009

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

I’ve never liked Paul Giamatti.
Critics have fallen over themselves singing his praises
in such films as American Splendor and Sideways
and I could not have agreed less—until this
year.

First came his funny turn in Duplicity
and then I saw the John Adams HBO miniseries
(which I avoided watching last years specifically because
it starred Mr. G!) where he was simply astonishing.

Now comes the off-beat and original
Cold Souls, which could have been written by
Charlie Kaufman.

Giamatti is deadpan hilarious as himself…or
some strangely concocted version of himself (via writer/director
Sohie Barhes’ clever mind) embarking on a NYC production
of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The angst and
anxiety of playing the role causes him to take a chance
on a new fad that is gripping the globe, the extraction
of one’s soul to alleviate suffering and, well,
feeling. This leads to a series of insane plot twists
that involve the illegal transfer of souls to and from
Russia.

Sophie Barthes is a clever and wonderfully
satiric writer. Had the film been directed by a Spike
Jonze, it could have soared to unconventional heights.
In the directorial hands of Barthes, the film does take
off, but never reaches the heights the ambitious script
and eager cast aspire to.

One of the major disappointments is
the complete waste of Emily Watson, a towering talent
relegated to portraying a one-dimensional ‘suffering’
wife. There were so many possibilities to explore and,
yet, the relationship between Giamatti and Watson is cliché’
and downright dull.

Giamatti manages to hold viewer interested
throughout and makes the film worth the time.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave/
When first we practice to deceive.” So said Sir
Walter Scott. Deceptions in high places were going on
thousands of years ago, when King Agamemnon opted to deceived
Queen Clytemnestra with a mistress; more recently when
Cassio manipulated his boss Othello with scandalous gossip
about Desdemona; and when former President Bush deceived
the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Deception
reigns in 1993 and 1945, the two periods embraced by Death
in Love, probably a semi-autobiographical film by
writer-director Boaz Yakin. Yakin's A Price Above
Rubies told the story of a Jewish woman, trained
as a jeweler, who was unhappily married to an Orthodox
Jewish scholar.

The film was shot by Danish cinematographer Frederik Jacobi
in just 25 days in New York. It was also sharply edited
by John Lyons who cross-cuts between ’45 and ’93
so rapidly that the stirring melodrama moves swiftly.
Death in Love is a challenging work of art, one
requiring close attention particularly to Yakin’s
arch, theatrical dialogue.

From the beginning, the film strikes
notes of originality. It begins with no title, no credits,
bluntly confronting us with a scene from a German prison
in which a Nazi doctor who is performing gruesome experiments
on Jewish women (graphically shown) is deceived by a woman
prisoner of about 17 years of age (Emma Bell) who smiles
at the experimenter (Carrington Vilmont). She become his
mistress, a woman who falls in love with the Nazi while
at the same time feels desperately guilty about her manipulation,
even more so about her genuine passion for this handsome
ogre. Decades later, the woman (Jacqueline Bisset) now
the wife of a passive man she married because unlike the
Nazi doctor he will never leave her, has two grown sons
who are smothered by her rages - they react to the world
neurotically but in vastly different ways. The forty-year-old
man played by Josh Lucas runs a scam of a modeling agency,
manipulating the lonely women he charms into his New York
workplace into paying for acting lessons. Lucas' character
has a rough-sex relationship with his boss (Vanessa Kai).
His brother (Lukas Haas) is an unemployed, depressed compulsive
living with his parents and insisting that they cook for
him two yams (must be two, not one or three) for dinner.

The film for all its staginess and borderline-pretentious
dialogue, rivets attention to its graphic scenes of sex
(involving S&M, missionary, and masturbation), on
violence (particularly the carving up of hapless Jewish
women), and on family disruption and dysfunction. Jacqueline
Bisset turns out a towering performance as a modern-day
Medea, throwing dishes and furniture about the apartment
to vent her frustration at having never again received
the perverted intimacy she enjoyed during the 1940s.

Cinephiles, who long for films with
originality, will be happy to enjoy the melodramatic excesses
of Death in Love, which reminded this viewer
of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (the story
of a Jewish singer who infiltrates Gestapo headquarters
for the Dutch resistance movement). Death in Love
falls easily into the same category.

If you want to be a stand-up comedian,
it may pay to start out as a dishwasher in a comedy club.
That’s the way Judd Apatow got into the game, one
which, according to Funny People, concentrates
on penis jokes and bodily functions both ecstatic and
awful. If Lenny Bruce came of age during the early part
of this century, he’d be lucky to play in a Peoria
nursing home. I hesitate to make a value judgment on this,
but one wonders whether there’s much else left to
joke about. Political satire? The latest movie entry into
that field is the critically acclaimed In the Loop,
a parody of international relations starring idiots from
both sides of the Atlantic who parse the costs of war
by using a toy calculator in a child’s room abounding
in teddy bears. But even there, profanity reigns as though
a satire without the use of the f-word would be impotent.

If you know Judd Apatow, you know that
he’s the sort of writer-director who’d be
nobody if he came of writing-directing age in the 1950’s
when the censors would scarcely allow an actor to use
to word “pregnant.” We’ve come a way
since then, though the pendulum has swung to the other
side. Funny People is awash in penis-testicle
jokes, only one mentioning a vagina in the context of
a young woman’s organ being narrow and therefore
preferring entry by men with cozier-size equipment. Happily,
though, no bodily fluids and solids are on display, a
step up for a picture that depends on verbal sparring
instead.

Judd Apatow has come along. Having scripted
such crafty comedies as Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old
Virgin, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
and Pineapple Express, he has now created his
most mature film: one which mixed drama and comedy so
subtly that we’re left with a fleshed-out piece
rather than one which simply exhibits fleshy pieces.

While the emphasis is on comedy, how
can a plot that finds its principal character afflicted
with a terminal blood disease be anything but serious—especially
if Queen Latifah is not in the cast? In Funny People,
which is billed by the studio as “the story of a
famous comedian who has a near-death experience,”
George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a nationally-famous celeb
who has appeared in junk movies playing a baby with the
head of an adult, has been diagnosed with an illness that
is no longer treatable through chemo and radiation. He
undergoes an experimental treatment with drugs that have
been successful with only eight percent of patients. Looking
death in the eye, George reevaluates his life, one which
is hugely rich in material goods (he has a drop-dead California
estate with indoor and outdoor pools) but no real friends—a
divorced man who tries to redeem himself by apologizing
to his ex-wife, Laura (Leslie Mann-who happens to be Judd
Apatow’s wife in real life) for “screwing
up”—literally. That’s the deadly serious
theme.

But when George hires unsuccessful stand-up
comic Ira Wright nee Weiner (Seth Rogen), pulling him
away from the deli counter where he makes sandwiches together
with co-worker Chuck (RZA), the laughs begin. Apatow shifts
the action from stand-up comedy scenes to a no-holds-barred
attempt by George to win back his wife, who is now married
to Clarke (Eric Bana) and is raising two daughters, Mable
(Maude Apatow) and Ingrid (Iris Apatow—both Judd’s
real-life kids). The principal comedy centers on the relationship
between George and Ira , as Ira writes the gags and sometimes
delivers them himself, and George performs in elegant
comedy clubs and one large concert hall.

One must guess that George might steadily
lose an audience. With the Damoclean sword of disease
hanging over his head, he delivers monologues that give
expression to his depression: “We all die”—that
sort of thing. For his part Ira appears to be George’s
comedian-in-waiting, a new, big hit with the crowds but
sexually, a zero, unable to connect intimately whether
with one of the bimbos invited to George’s house
or with fellow stand-up comic Daisy (newcomer Aubrey Plaza).
Ira seems on his way to becoming a forty-year-old virgin.

While there’s no single scene
that finds Seth Rogen as funny as he was when playing
a clueless cop in Pineapple Express, on the whole
this film is more sophisticated than anything previously
handled by Apatow. The scenes that find Adam Sandler’s
character trying desperately to reconnect with his ex-wife
are tender (mixed with gags, of course), while side roles
played strictly for laughs find Mark (Jason Schwartzman)
and Leo (Jonah Hill), the former as an educator in a TV
sitcom Yo, Teach, the latter as a successful
comic. Seth Rogen has slimmed down by twenty pounds, though
his role does not appear to require such discipline.

The entire film’s quality rests
primarily on the chemistry between Adam Sandler and Seth
Rogen. Happily, they’re as a combustible together
as a mixture of H2S04 and KCL03.

Not since Barry Levinson’s Wag
the Dog, in 1997, has a motion picture brilliantly
captured the true redundancy of political satire. In
the Loop, a bold, abrasive new comedy courtesy of
the UK, cleverly sends up the maneuverings and machinations
of the leaders of the two most powerful nations on the
planet (or the two nations that think they have the most
power anyway…)

The film grew out of the BBC series
The Thick of It and is deftly written by director
Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell and
Tony Roche, with additional dialogue by Ian Martin.

The lunatic narrative (which warrants
repeat viewings to totally appreciate and savor) explodes
when Britain’s Secretary of State for International
Development, Simon Foster (a perfectly befuddled and dundercloddish
Tom Hollander), has the audacity to suggest that war in
the Middle East is “unforeseeable.” This tears
the lid off a can of political worms that slithers crazy
and pisses many folks in the warmongering government off.
Foster attempts to backpeddle and spin his gaffe at a
press conference declaring, “Britain must be ready
to climb the mountains of conflict.” Gleefully,
the Americans enter the picture and the Strangelovian
plot festers and kicks into zany gear.

The acting is sensational with a cast
of seasoned pros that complement one another. James Gandolfini
is particularly hilarious as an off-kilter US General.
But the film belongs to Peter Capaldi. As spin-doctor
extraordinaire, Malcolm Tucker, Capaldi gives a relentlessly
furious performance so enjoyable it should be criminal!
His nasty and searing line deliveries are some of the
funniest movie moments I have seen in eons. Someone get
this guy a gold statue…or his own HBO show!

Midway through the film, a debate ensues
about increasing the number of troops. Gandolfini’s
burly General argues the need for the escalation explaining:
“At the end of the war, you need some troops left
or it looks like you’ve lost.” How do you
argue with that kind of frighteningly illogical logic?

Nora Ephron's new feast, Julie and
Julia, is an absolutely delightful and delicious
concoction that boasts a refreshing non-traditional narrative,
presents food the in the most scrumptious way since Babette’s
Feast and—surprise-- features another brilliant
performance by our reigning queen of cinema, the divine
Meryl Streep!

Pay no attention to those silly early
online reviews (written by geeky men who usually only
love geeky and loud studio shit); this film is captivating
throughout and, like its more famous subject, a grand
inspiration!

Ephron has a wonderful time depicting
and contrasting the lives of two real people and their
relationships with their men as well as their livelihood—food.
Based on two memoirs, “My Life in France,”
by Ms. Child and “Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking
Dangerously” by Julie Powell, Ephron juxtaposes
the story of one woman’s attempt to pay homage to
her heroine while giving her life new meaning.

Unhappy at work, Julie decides to blog
about her new goal, she will cook all 524 recipes in Child’s
legendary book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
The film moves back and forth between Julie’s life
in 2002 and that of Child’s in 1940’s France
and her journey toward actually writing the masterwork
that would change cooking forever.

Meryl Streep’s spot-on Julia Child
is a towering (both physically and talent-wise) figure
filled with insecurities and underlying secret ambitions
but a tremendous joi de vivre that envelops everyone around
her. The scene where she masters the art of cutting onions
(I am allergic so that sequence held a simultaneous hypnotic
and repellent fascination) is a great example of her determination
and Meryl nails it. What a marvelous character! What a
fabulous performance! Streep may very well be on her way
to Oscar nomination number sixteen. A Golden Globe nod
is certain.

Amy Adams is an enchanting creature
(pun intended) and her Julie is a neurotic mess except
when she is cooking. Julie could have easily emerged as
an unappealing bitch but Adams gives her just enough sweet
idiosyncrasies that we want her to succeed in her goal
(and stop alienating her husband!) Watching her apprehensively
murder a lobster and triumphantly bone a duck is just
a joy.

The two women together, even though
they are NEVER together, are a dream film team. The film
contains solid supporting turns by Stanley Tucci (a Devil
Wears Prada reunion of sorts) and Chris Messina as
the respected spouses as well as Linda Emond, Mary Lynn
Rajskub and the hilarious Jane Lynch as Child’s
taller sister.

The third star of the film, though,
is the yummy dishes that both women cook. Trust me, seeing
Julie and Julia will prompt the need for a visit
to a fancy restaurant as soon as the credits roll.

If you don’t leave the theater
thinking “wtf,” maybe you were not paying
attention. A bizarre film with a flashback that does more
to confuse than elucidate, David Twohy’s B-movie
thriller graphically recaps the old saw (so to speak)
that if you vacation in remote areas, you’re going
to be stalked by knife-wielding, gun-toting psychopathic
killers. While there is that element of horror familiar
to fans of the Hostel series, this film is more
appropriately called a murder mystery, one in which patrons
in their safe theater seats try to figure out who are
the maniacs and who are the ordinary neurotics.

Filmed in the jungles of Puerto Rico
standing in for the Ma Pali coastline in Hawaii’s
Kauai island, A Perfect Getaway opens with a
stereotypical wedding scene (actually the best part of
the movie). Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich)
get hitched amid the guests’ horseplay, and off
they go to Hawaii, as the bride repeats the mantra “Mrs.
Cydney Anderson.” They hear of killings in Honolulu,
wonder whether the murderer might have traveled to their
part of the state. They give a lift to a trashy couple
(Chris Hemsworth, Marley Shelton), come out of that episode
safely, then it’s just their luck to run into another
couple, Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez).
Nick’s the rugged type used to kayaking and mountain
climbing, just the traits that make Cliff and Cydney suspicious.
Cliff, on the other hand, is allegedly a screenwriter,
though like most of his ilk, he has not had any of his
scripts arrive to a screen. Cliff and Nick get along—opposites
must attract, while the women chat about more intimate
things than cutting up a wild animal that Nick has killed
with a bow and arrow. There’s blood in the water,
on the animal, on a knife, in a leg; everywhere but in
the humdrum script.

Steve Zahn acts against type as a nerdy
would-be writer. One wonders what Milla Jovovich’s
character sees in him. The scenery is breathtaking, a
product placement for Hawaiian vacations—ever though
it was filmed in P.R.

Columbia Pictures/ Lakeshore Entertainment
Reviewed for New York Cool by Harvey Karten

Google “men dating” and
you’ll find a few pages of magazines, newspapers
and blogs by digital Romeos and electronic Casanovas,
all calling upon their readers to act in certain ways
to get the women they want. Everyone with internet capabilities
has his or her own ideas. One such counsel (ignored in
this film) is to never give a woman advice because it
will not be long before she’ll say, “Let’s
be friends.”

Mike (Gerard Butler) is one such romantic
advisor, one who would gasp and be overcome with depression
if any woman ever said that to him. He is a womanizer
par excellence who, during the course of Robert Luketic’s
The Ugly Truth manages to attract every woman
he sees. Mike has run a successful TV show called The
Ugly Truth where he tells women that “all men
are simple…don’t try to change us…we’re
incapable of making progress.” In the fashion of
romantic comedies his advice is subverted by The One and
the object of his affection, Abby (Katherine Heigl) turns
miraculously from control freak to absolute putty.

In his quest to show how two people
with polar opposite personalities ultimately meet in the
middle, Luketic exhibits Abby (Katherine Heigl) a Sacramento,
California TV news producer as a control freak, one who
thereby has little success with men and even less good
fortune with the dismal ratings for her show. When her
boss brings Mike into the news program to boost ratings,
Abby is at first appalled but quickly, and without much
credibility, turns to him for advice. Mike obliges, guiding
Abby like a modern Cyrano de Bergerac through her courtship
with a young, handsome orthopedic surgeon (Eric Winter),
who checks off beautifully on Abby’s 10-point mental
rating sheet as a boy friend and perhaps life’s
partner. Abby meets her surgeon when she climbs a tree
to bring down her pet cat, landing upside down on a branch.
The doctor, living next door, interrupts his shave to
rescue her and to meet cute, his own pants falling to
the floor leaving him wholly exposed to her.

Though a beautiful woman, Abby seems
not only incapable of getting dates on her own without
advice, but must rely on Mike’s hackneyed cues to
do things like 1) keep the guy on telephone hold to see
whether he will hang up or stay on, 2) hang up on him
to see whether he calls back.

Though Abby looks in her early twenties
(Heigl is 30), could she be that naive and unpracticed
that she must rely on such sophomoric counsel, which includes
such homilies as when attending a baseball game to “put
the hot dog slowly into your mouth?” To further
Abby’s hunt for men, the ever-mindful Mike sends
her a present of vibrating panties which does what they’re
supposed to do during a dinner with the TV program’s
corporate sponsors, leading to a predictably vulgar and
less than amusing presentation to the suits.

Director Luketic moves into Judd Apatow
country without originality, pushing Heigl to act embarrassingly
over-the-top throughout, talking fast, talking dirty.
Seeking humor, the film is instead an embarrassment. Heigl
performed better in Knocked Up, where she benefited
from Judd Apatow’s surer hand. Gerard Butler, whose
mellifluous voice was exploited splendidly in Joel Schumacher’s
The Phantom of the Opera, is reduced to the level
of Zack Snyder’s laughable action pic, 300.
Given the amateurish direction at work in this movie,
the cat is the best performer: need I say more?